'Oh, there's no doubt some one is having his knife into me. Of course I can't help reflecting on what you said. In fact, it was your advice to look out for squalls, that made me a bit prepared when I left you. Would you mind telling me the grounds you had for your suspicions?'
'Go on with your story first. What happened after that?'
'What happened after that!' he cried, 'everything--everything! What happened after that has made a new man of me; life has become new, the world has become new!'
'It's no riddle, sir,--it's a solution of all the riddles. I will tell you. While I was convalescing, I went to a Y.M.C.A. camp. I had never been to one of these places before; I don't know why I went then, except that the time hung a bit heavy on my hands. You see, every man was up to his neck in work, and there was great excitement in making preparations for the push, and I couldn't do anything. Not but what I had always respected the Y.M.C.A.,--what the British Army would have done without it I don't know. In my opinion, that body is doing as much to win the war as the War Office is--perhaps a bit more. They have kept thousands upon thousands of our chaps steady and straight. They have done more to fight the devil than--but there, I'll come to that presently.
'Well, one night I made my way into the Y.M.C.A. hut. At first I did nothing but read the papers, but presently I realized that a service was going on. The hall wasn't full by any means. Before this push it was full every night; but you see the boys were busy. Presently I caught sight of the man who was speaking, and I liked his face. I quickly found out that he was an intelligent man, too, and I went up nearer the platform to hear what he had to say. He was not a chaplain or anything of that sort, he was just one of the Y.M.C.A. workers. Who he was I didn't know then,--I don't now, although I have an idea I shall meet him some day, and I shall thank him as a man was never thanked yet.'
'He made me know the greatest fact in the world,' and he spoke very earnestly. 'He made me realize that there was a God. That fact hadn't come within the realm of my vision,--I hadn't thought anything about it. You see,' and I could see he had forgotten all about military etiquette and the difference in our ranks, 'as I have said to you before, I have been like a man beginning to write the story of his life at the middle. Having no memory, I have had no preconceived notions, and very few prejudices. I suppose if some one had asked me if I believed that there was a God, I should have said yes, although I should have been a bit doubtful. Perhaps I should have thought that there was some great Force which brought all that we see into being, and then I should have said that, if this great Force were intelligent, He'd made an awful mess of things, that He'd found the Universe too big a thing to manage. But I didn't know; anyhow, the thought of God, the fact of God, hadn't troubled me, neither had I thought much about myself in a deeper way.